Welfare reform plan to get thousands to work » Communities » 24dash.com

Radical plans to get hundreds of thousands of people off benefits and into work will be launched today by the Government.

The controversial reforms were hailed by Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell as the biggest shake-up of the modern welfare state since the Beveridge Report of the 1940s.

And they were backed by Conservative leader David Cameron, who offered ministers the support of his MPs to ensure that the package is not derailed by a Labour backbench rebellion in the House of Commons.

Under the proposals laid out in Mr Purnell's Welfare Reform Green Paper today, Incapacity Benefit will be abolished by 2013 and Income Support will also be scrapped.

In their place will be a simplified system of two benefits - Employment Support Allowance for those with medical problems which limit their ability to work and JobSeekers' Allowance for those who are fit to work.

A leaked late draft of the Green Paper revealed that ministers are aiming for a record 80% employment rate - up from the current 75% - and made clear their insistence that there will be "no right to a life on benefits" for anyone capable of working.

All Incapacity Benefit claimants will undergo medical tests to determine what capacity they have for employment, and only full-time carers and disabled people "with the greatest needs" will be exempt from being expected to find work.

Unemployed drug addicts who lie to get benefits will be forced to repay the money and could face jail, while jobless people who take drugs will be banned from receiving dole money unless they accept treatment.

Lone parents with children aged seven or more will be expected to seek work.

The long-term unemployed will face US-style "work for dole" programmes requiring them to undertake useful activities to ensure they make a "fair contribution" in return for state support.

And private firms which win contracts to help people find jobs could be paid from the resulting savings in benefits.

Mr Purnell yesterday said the changes would put responsibility "right at the heart of the welfare state" and help transform the lives of millions of people across the country.

The new sanctions for people who refused to seek work would be matched by support to help them find suitable employment, he said.

"I'm saying 'support and responsibility'," said Mr Purnell. "And if people don't live up to that expectation... then of course people can lose their benefits.

"For people who are looking for work, we will be saying to people if they play the system that they will have to work to get their benefits.

"So there's a very clear sanction at the end of the line. But the key thing is that in an ideal world you don't want to use the sanction, you want people to take up the support."

The Green Paper will also set out new measures to lift 200,000 children out of poverty by allowing child maintenance payments to be disregarded when calculating how much benefit parents are entitled to.

An Employment Retention and Advancement programme which helps lone parents find and keep appropriate employment - including emergency payments of up to £300 to overcome short-term hurdles to working - will also be extended.

The Green Paper accepts in full the recommendations of a report by banker David Freud, who believes up to two million people are unnecessarily claiming incapacity benefit.

Mr Cameron said it also draws heavily on Conservative proposals unveiled in January, and declared himself "thrilled" that the ideas were being borrowed by ministers.

Asked whether ministers could rely on Tory votes to get the package through the Commons, he replied: "Absolutely. James Purnell should know, and the Government should know, that if they have a problem with their backbenchers, then the Conservative Party under my leadership will do the right thing and will back them up and make sure we reform welfare properly."

But Mr Purnell denied that Labour backbenchers would be unhappy with his proposals.

"I think that people who see the way Incapacity Benefit or drug addiction or deep unemployment can scar communities are desperate to turn that round and when I speak to my colleagues they want a system that provides support for people, but also responsibility," he said.

"What the Tories want to do is to be responsible but not to provide the support.

"David Cameron wants to get rid of the tax credits which would help people to be lifted out of poverty and to get on. We want to provide both, and that's an approach which lots of my Labour colleagues wholeheartedly back."